


and the tide it takes me away from you (and it brings me back again)

by onceuponawar



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 3x18, F/M, SnowBarry - Freeform, barry is reprising his role here has caitlin's concerned hubby, this is caught somewhere between depressing and hopeful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 13:12:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10491648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceuponawar/pseuds/onceuponawar
Summary: He grabs onto something for balance, he doesn't register what it is, only that it's the single thing keeping him upright. “Where is she? What happened to her?”"She died."[3x18 response fic]





	

**Author's Note:**

> honestly 3x18 ended on such an emotionally wrecking note that this is basically just a huge vent for my feelings. still wishing Barry could have, you know, been at Caitlin's death bed, but I guess a girl can't have everything. enjoy!

Barry didn't know until after.

 

I'm going to the future, he'd told Iris and Joe not more than three hours before receiving the message. They'd had no arguments for him, desperate and out of options; just like he was. He was glad neither had the thought to ask how exactly it was going to help, who'd he be seeking out to find the answers, how this would affect the timeline. Because he didn't know. All he knew was that they were slowly begin to grasp at straws as one headline after another came true, perfectly aligning for Iris’s death.

 

All he knew was that he had to stop that from happening, at any cost. 

 

He and Iris drove-it seemed so strange, but he couldn't be flashing into the apartment building every night and not coming back out, the was a little too conspicuous even for him-back home in a heavy silence. One that wasn't begging to be spoken into, but held so many concerns and nerves unspoken of that it kept both their mouths shut voluntarily. Plus, if they voiced the worry that hung over them then that would make the chances of him going to the future and finding a way to fix everything more of a wistful dream than anything.

 

Somehow, not talking about repercussions helped him focus on believing that this would work, for not just the sake of Iris, but the entire team. He unlocked the apartment and wandered in aimlessly, completing the household tasks Iris asked him to, thinking fast. If he could just find someone he knew now in the future, someone close to him, maybe even future Barry if he was lucky, he could ask them for Savitar’s name then come back and hunt him down in this time, before the God of Speed got the chance to cause any more harm. 

 

He’s feeling almost confident when he lets his head hit the pillow, staring at the blank ceiling as if it was going to fill in the rest of his life’s gaps. For the first time in many nights, he drifts off to sleep easily, a course of action still in the works, but a physical and psychological need for a solid night’s rest eventually taking over. 

 

For an hour and a half, he wins a nightmare-less sleep. He doesn't see Wally trapped in the speed force, reliving his worst moments over and over or Cisco’s grief stricken look of betrayal when he first returned from Flashpoint or his dead mother on the floor of his childhood home or Iris, getting run through by Savitar and falling unceremoniously to the pavement of a time nearing ever closer. He doesn't hear the God of Speed’s voice mocking him or Caitlin, masked by the voice of Killer Frost, yelling that he was the one who made her a monster. None of that haunts him tonight and he's enjoying it so much that when his phone buzzing wakes him, he nearly rolls over and falls back asleep. 

 

It's when it buzzes for a second time that he finds it in himself to sit up and see who so desperately needs him at midnight. He rubs his eyes and pushes the hair away from his face and is surprised to see Cisco’s name on the screen. The Flash rarely covered night shifts anymore, what kind of crime could be occurring that Cisco felt so compelled to message him? Why was he even at the lab this late in the first place?

 

You need to come to Star Labs right now.

 

Now Barry was wide awake. There was no crime specification in the message, meaning that a robbery couldn't be the reason he was being summoned. There was something so deathly cryptic about it, and Cisco very rarely used proper capitalization and punctuation in his messages. But what was at Star Labs besides-

 

Caitlin.

 

Barry propelled himself out of bed so fast he nearly flashed to the wardrobe, pulling on his flannel from earlier that day and grabbing a pair of jeans that still lingered on the floor as his makeshift outfit. He peeks over to Iris’s side of the bed momentarily, wondering if he should wake her in case something was really wrong, but she, too, seemed to be nightmare free for once, by the sound of her steady breathing, and he would be the last one to pull her out from that. She didn't need more worry to bear as it was.

 

Barry wasn't sure he would be able to handle it if something had gone wrong while he had been off formulating plans to go into the future.

 

Cisco’s emotionless words haunt him in the brief seconds it takes him to run into the lab. He checks the cortex first, hoping childishly that Cisco is hiding in there with Caitlin, healed and well, both of them ready to jump out and tell him that they were just pulling a prank like old times. When he doesn't find them there, as suspected, a feeling of dread still settles in his chest, resonating a fear to his core, and he runs to the med bay instead. 

 

He can feel the transfer from a lukewarm air temperature held in the rest of the lab to a nipping chill immediately. He can hear his heart beating in his ears. His eyes race to Caitlin’s cot first before observing the rest of the room. He finds it empty, sheets glinting under the light with ice shavings. He can feel his knees weaken.

 

He grabs onto something for balance, he doesn't register what it is, only that it's the single thing keeping him upright. “Where is she? What happened to her?”

 

It's only after he asks that Barry’s eyes really take in the scene. Glass is shattered on the floor, a viciously sharp icicle has pierced the front wall and every piece of medical equipment that usually lingers close is outside of a ten foot radius of the cot. There's the oxygen mask thrown off to the side. The crash cart is turned all the way up, with its paddles dangling from the side of the cart. Caitlin’s necklace, the only thing that keeps Killer Frost at bay, lays on the tile, its glow gone, ripped at the clasp. A wave of nausea washes over Barry and he brings a hand to cover his mouth before dragging it up to reside on his forehead.

 

He finds Cisco next, who's huddled in the corner by the door, sitting on his legs with his shoulders hunched inward. He's staring at the cot in disbelief, his hair a tangled mess and tears running down his cheeks. His lips are parted, but no words find their way out.

 

Barry doesn't know what to say either, so overwhelmed that for a minute both men are just staring at the empty cot, hearts aching for the woman who no longer resided there. And just when Barry thinks he can't take any more, the moment is broken by Cisco speaking.

 

“She died.”

 

Barry loses his grip on the object that was holding up most of his weight and collapses against the wall, sinking to the floor with his knees to his chest. His elbows rest on his knees and his hands have tangled themselves in his hair, gripping tightly as though the feeling of that physical pain may be the only thing keeping him from falling apart.

 

“She really, truly, died, Barry. She started seizuring in the middle of a sentence and we tried-” Cisco choked back a sob. He didn't continue the sentence. “Julian suggested blood clot, he doesn't know exactly, but she just started flatlining and we couldn't stop it. I couldn't stop it… She just lied there, so still. She was… gone; lifeless. And then Julian ripped off the stupid necklace and for one second, I thought she was going to be okay-”

 

Cisco breaks off for good now, tears coming too fast for him to continue. He buries his face in his hands, then, without even wiping his eyes, interlocks them as if he were in prayer; taking deep breaths in attempt to regain control.

 

Barry finished for him, the severe realness of the situation not quite hitting yet. “She's her, now, isn't she?” He wavers, so close to breaking. “Killer Frost?”

 

Cisco nods solemnly, saying no more. Barry can see him shutting down, but suddenly the speedster is back in the formulating mode he was in earlier with the future scenario, trying to construct a plan with his scattered brain. He shoves himself off the ground, walking as steadily as he can over to Cisco. 

 

“Where is Julian?”

 

Cisco looks up at him, the same disbelief he had towards the cot now mirrored towards him. “He and HR went to look for her not long after she did that,"-he gestures towards the icicle punctured in the wall with his chin-"and ran out, but they didn't catch her, I'm sure of it. She's more powerful than she was, further gone.”

 

Barry’s hands are raking his hair again, grasping for a sense of direction. That was so far from what he wanted to hear. Now it feels as if he's in one of his nightmares again, drowning in the echo of Caitlin yelling from behind one of the pipeline’s cell’s walls : “You did this to me!” Only it was so, so much more real.

 

He had done this to her. His mistake, his flimsy, self-centered, decision had given her these powers in the first place, which made it his job to help her get rid of them. But he'd done nothing of the sort, instead focusing so solely on Iris that he forgot other people he cared for were suffering too, even if it was quietly. He remembered what he'd thought to himself earlier, that he had to stop Iris from dying at any cost. He wondered how he ever could have risked Caitlin being that cost to pay. 

 

Now he had to bring her home safely, which really had been decided as soon as he saw her bed was empty. No debate, even though he could see a half-wit argument forming on Cisco’s grief-ridden face.

 

Barry promised himself that he could allow himself to grieve her later too, right after he found her and brought her back to the lab and found a way to make her their Caitlin, his Caitlin, again. 

 

With a shuddering breath, he turns towards Cisco. “I'm going to find her.”

 

Vibe had seemed to lost any fighting will he had left, but all the same he attempts to stand. "Let me come, I can help." Barry looks down at him, not pitying, but tying to convey what he needed to say with his eyes, instead of trying to say it aloud and having it come out hole-digging the mess it surely would. Understanding the message, Cisco sits back down. He'd never admit it, of course, but Barry saw a little relief in his eyes. After a moment of silence, Cisco looks back up at Barry with fresh tears running slowly and silently down his cheeks. “Bring her home.” 

 

There was something resonating about his words. Maybe because they both knew “home” was far from her apartment or even this lab, it was the two of them, Barry and Cisco. The rest of the team applied too, of course, but there was a solidarity between the three of them specifically, because they were the original trio, despite everything and every new member that had joined over the past three years; they'd been through things together that could never quite be explained to anyone else. And wasn't that the definition of home anyway? “Always,” Barry says with melancholy and flashes away from the scene. 

 

And while there was still an echoing of “Oh, god, what have I done” pounding in the back of his mind, there was also a sense of security. Because if there was one thing Barry did know about the future, it was that he would always find Caitlin Snow and he would always bring her home to him.


End file.
